Becoming A Delegating Superhero

Becoming a Delegating Superhero
With your hostess Erin Blaskie
www.bsetc.ca
www.ErinBlaskie.com

About Your Presenter
www.bsetc.ca – Have owned and operated a creative, professional outsourcing company for over five years.
www.ErinBlaskie.com – Coach entrepreneurs on the best Internet Marketing methods and how to get their message out there and heard in a big way.
www.LifeStreaminColor.com – Stream a daily life stream of information, resources and activities to those who are interested in following along.

Format of This Call
Delivered via webinar / teleseminar.
Being recorded in high definition video.
Videos will be split and posted onto YouTube and also e-mailed to registrants.
Approx. 1 hour of training and then we’ll do 30 minutes of Q&A.
Hash tag is #delehero

Why We’re Here
Delegating and team management tends to be an area that people have difficulty with.
When we start businesses, we aren’t given the proper training on hiring and growing a team.
Being on the receiving end of this delegating has provided me with a lot of first hand experience.

What We’ll Cover
How to be an engaged delegator and communicate your needs.
Why regular meetings (via telephone) are a good idea.
Why honoring someone’s work style will help you get more results.

What We’ll Cover
The three steps to take with every task to be sure you and your team are aligned.
How to incorporate a tool into your delegating to keep track of projects.
Biggest mistakes made with a team.

How to Be an Engaged Delegator
Learn about your team.
Find out how they like to receive information.
Find out what tools they’ve used for organization and efficiency.
Find out how they prefer to communicate daily, weekly, etc.
Learn about their work hours and working preferences.
Find out what type of work they love to do most.
Learn about what they envision their role in their client’s companies.

Teach your team about yourself.
Tell your team how you prefer to receive information.
Tell your team what sort of communication preferences you have – phone, e-mail, etc.
Tell your team what you need to feel secure, heard and taken care of.
Have a document or something you can share with your team that explains your vision and the company’s vision.
Tell your team the type of work you like to do least.
Tell your team exactly what you are looking for in a service provider.

Put together a team that is aligned with your needs.
Make sure communication styles are aligned.
Don’t hire a team if that team is not who you are needing in the moment.
Example: hiring a VA firm when you really need an Online Business Manager.
Don’t be afraid to hire more than one service provider to ensure your needs are met properly.

Expect to do some leg work yourself if you want ultimate success.
Be prepared to communicate out what needs to be done.
Communicate out when you need it back by.
Communicate where that task fits with regards to the other tasks.
Engage your team as well.
Ask them what else they could do in a project to enhance the over all project experience.
Make sure to clear deadlines with them.

Communicating Your Needs

Virtual relationships require a lot more communication than in-person ones.
Your team members will not see what is inside of your head in terms of vision – you will need to communicate this out to them.
Be a positive leader. No one likes working with someone who is negative and it can cause your team to withdraw, lose inspiration and want to quit the work they are doing with you.

Regular meetings.
Schedule one call per week – whether it is 30 minutes or 60 minutes – and use call to assign new tasks and discuss open projects.
During the call, assess the accuracy of set timelines and adjust where needed.
Don’t be domineering, negative, forceful or intimidating if and when things aren’t going 100% smoothly – work with your team and let them know that the only direction is forward.

Don’t rely on one communication source.
E-mail is unreliable these days. If responses aren’t fast via e-mail, use the systems set in place or use the telephone.
Don’t become a victim where communication is concerned. If you are being an engaged leader, you will create many avenues of open communication and availability for your team.
If / when communication breaks down, fix and move forward with the newly aligned plan.

Honoring Your Team’s Style
Everyone has their own working style – learn what your team’s working style is and honor it.
Come together to create an ideal working relationship that suits both of you.
Appreciate, respect and admire the knowledge, service and awesomeness that your team provides to you and you’ll receive support on steroids.

Three Steps to Take With a Task
Step One: Communicate Out Needs
On your regularly scheduled call or in a separately scheduled call, let your team know what you need.
Be as specific as possible in requesting this task. Use examples you’ve seen that you like, list out what you don’t want/like and describe your vision as clearly as you can.

Step Two: Create Realistic Expectations
Discuss timelines and milestones and put something in place that suits your needs and the realism of your team member(s).
Make sure the work is something that team member can do and has the technical (or other) expertise required.
If you aren’t tech-savvy, learn about the technology you are wishing to implement and make sure what you need can actually be accomplished. This will remove later frustrations, time and effort.

Step Three: Put Determined Details into a System
Make sure to put tasks, milestones and any related files, etc. into your system immediately.
Use the system to assign the tasks to the proper individuals or, ensure your team member has done this.
Start a new message thread to discuss that task (and only that task) in your system.
This will give you an aligned system to check back to regularly for status updates and the like.

Utilizing a Tool in Delegating
Basecamp
A tool used to track to-dos, milestones, files, messages, time and more.
Can have multiple team members and assign various pieces to each team member.
Can have multiple projects to keep track of things individually.
http://bit.ly/3xm3s

Basecamp Demos
We’ll look together (video) at how to use Basecamp effectively and in general.

Biggest Mistakes Made
The Blame Game
When things go wrong, as inevitably they will (it’s life), how do you handle it?
Learn to allow your team to make occasional mistakes in a supported environment.
When blame is placed on the team all of the time, the team becomes worrisome which actually creates more mistakes.
If you want a team to do their best, encourage the positives and communicate out the things that could be better in a constructive way.

Biggest Mistakes Made
Lack of Respect
Respect the knowledge and expertise.
Respect timeframes and how long it takes for things to get done.
Respect and honor your team’s invoices – take the proactive approach of reviewing them but don’t instil fear around your team being paid for their hard work.
Team members will shut down when they feel a lack of respect and you won’t see the same amazing results.

Biggest Mistakes Made (Twitter)
@JonathanBoyer – People only delegating tasks they don’t like.
@KesslerKomics – Thinking that the person knows how to do the work without giving them any instructions. (@Valleem w/ similar suggestion)
@PaulDawalibi – Not fully leveraging people’s specific strengths... People don’t fully let go, don’t give the delegate a true sense of ownership & responsibility.
@ChaChanna – Micro-managing once they have delegated the work. (@KunalSheth similar suggestion)

@RyanStephens – It’s easy to overload and overwhelm your “go-to-person” instead of delegating evenly based on expertise & availability.
@Pluc – Not knowing what to delegate, what to keep, who to delegate to or delegating too much.
@StaceyHylen – Not having a system and being too scattered when delegating.
@LisaLarter – No follow-up, only giving feedback when it’s done wrong, not checking for completion, failing to understand level of difficulty.

@Onyerleft – Not delegating out anything and trying to do it all themselves.
@Dmdaly – Backing down when pushed back and choosing the wrong person for the job.
@SoCalVA – Not being clear about task, communicating desired outcome/expectations/ or problems they are trying to fix.
@AdrianneMachina – You can make people responsible for results, or ask them to follow your instructions – but not both.

@33photo – Expecting too much from them, or worse not explaining instructions and expecting them to follow through.
@glennansley – Delegating to a crowd / team (rather than asking someone specific).
@1datarecovery – Having a good understanding of the problem themself before they delegate the task.
@sofiashendi – Not taking the time to review what the actual work is and making it clear! Forwards are the worst!

@ThompsonPaul – Telling the delegate how to do the task instead of just being clear about needed outcome. Insisting they do it “your” way.
@ltwise - It's not my fault if something fails (i.e. delegating is not abdicating your accountability).
@CardinalPtREVA - Follow through - making sure all necessary information is at their disposal in an organized fashion so it's streamlined.
@TheDanMeyer - I think people delegate things without making sure that person has a full understanding of what they are doing and the timeline

5 Ways to Be a Stellar Leader
Communicate effectively.
Never blame, only work to achieve common dreams.
Know that when things go wrong, it’s not usually as big of a deal as it seems in the moment.
Understand that it isn’t about hierarchy, it’s about levelling out your company’s playing field to make all opinions and ideas count.
Turn to your team for thoughts, ideas and bigger picture visions. You might be surprised!

Questions?
Ask questions live.
Tweet them using #delehero in your Tweet.
E-mail erin.blaskie@gmail.com

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Becoming A Delegating Superhero

by Erin Blaskie on Jul 13, 2009

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Becoming A Delegating Superhero — Presentation Transcript